‘Pizza Arms’!: My daughter had been taking lessons with Maki Swim since she was 4 months old. She was 3 years old when she fell in the pool. Prior to this incident, I was never completely sure how much she was actually retaining during the lessons because any time we’d play in the pool together, she would cling to me the entire time and scream if I would be more than arms-length away from her, unless she was playing with her friends or with an Instructor. We were on vacation in Tahoe, I was in the top level of a dual level hot tub and she was on the steps in a pool which was about 10 feet away, when her friend pushed her off the step and into the pool. I can’t tell you how quickly I jumped to the second level of the hot tub and scrambled out to the deck when I saw my daughter under water doing her ‘pizza arms’ (breast stroke) and blowing her bubbles out while she surfaced and swam to the steps!! Even though I was only a few feet away, there was no way that I could have made it to her in time to help her, I realized after the fact. So had she not possessed the skills to recover from a fall in the water herself, I fear what would have happened otherwise. I’m so proud and grateful to have had her in swim lessons since she was an infant for this exact reason. I truly believe that having her in lessons at such a young age, made the swim skills become a second nature to her, so that when she did fall in, her automatic reaction was to ‘swim’ and not panic! Pizza arms saved the day!